Terabithia

I can't remember the first time that I met T, but I know neither of us has forgotten the night we first forged the connection that still links us.

Bored after a few quarters, we left our first Homecoming game and wandered off into the warm night. Humidity always feels like a caress to me, sometimes holding me oppressively close, but that night it was friendly and comfortable as we walked. T led our exploration of our new campus, wanting to share a new discovery with me.

His discovery turned out to be a tree close to the far end of campus. While it was far taller than I am, its branches spread around it to the ground. T held a branch aside for me and I discovered that where I anticipated more branches lay, there was large open space--large enough for a class, more than enough for a young man and the young lady he was impressing.

We stood for hours under that tree just talking. At least once we leaned toward one another and as my heart pounded I wondered if our first kiss was imminent. I didn't know that our first kiss was still months away when I shivered from nerves in the tree-shadowed yellow sodium glow of the streetlight.

Somehow the image of T that I carried with me during college never managed to capture the romantic side he showed me that night. Despite his long memory for me, the CDs he's made me and the guitar solos that he once left on my voicemail, I always forgot that he is a true romantic at heart. I guess that explains why I was surprised when the most special gift he brought when he visited was a pressed leaf from that tree. How appropriate that he shared a momento of our beginning just as our romantic relationship was ending.

Admissions

When I visited Wash U as a high school senior, I met this guy. We were both waiting in the admissions office for a shuttle to the airport and we ended up chatting for over an hour. I thought he was flirting with me, and while he wasn’t “my type”, I was flattered and curious. I often wondered about him after I got home and broke the news to my parents that my college education was going to be very expensive.

Sure enough, that fall he showed up in the engineering school too. When I was a freshman I was pretty involved in the Engineering Student Council, and he quickly found his way there as well. As I saw him in action, I determined he was cocky—coming off as a bit of jerk—and the memories of our interlude in the admissions office were easily shoved to the back of my brain.

Surfing through my friends and their friends today on Friendster, I came across his name and picture. I was surprised to see his name and face on my computer screen, but my jaw literally dropped when I saw his current location: Denver. Nearly nine years later and we’re living practically next door to one another. Even though I’m curious about what brought him to my area, I didn’t message him. Nothing in our shared history drives me to reconnect with him—except that afternoon in the admissions office.

John the fish

When I was a sophomore in college, my five roommates and I were living in a dorm that had once been a men's dorm. How could you tell? The urinal in our bathroom.

We decided to make our urinal a decorative and practical feature of our suite. A plant was our initial idea, but we took this opportunity to instead introduce a suite pet. His species: Beta fish. His name: (wait for it...) John. I also suggested Harry or Dick... Thanks folks, I'll be here all week!

It was soon discovered that the water level in the urinal dipped when the toilet was flushed. My roommate E became certain that we were traumatizing John by making him live in that environment. This led to an argument--I insisted that the fish did not have enough brain cells to be traumatized, but she insisted that he could, arguing, "You're not God and you're not the fish!" To make her happy, we soon moved John to a bowl in our living room.

One day about a week after John moved to his new home, E was awakened by the cleaning lady. She was very agitated--she had flushed the urinal as she was prone to do occasionally to circulate the water and then noticed the sign:

Please do not flush the urinal--the fishy wouldn't like it.